


Twenty-two

by spacetango



Series: A Shrine, Or Else a Scar [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Character Study, Drama, F/M, Other, Red Lyrium, Redcliffe, Romance shenanigans also, Solas plays Pygmalion, Solavellan, Time Shenanigans, and probably angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-09
Updated: 2015-05-09
Packaged: 2018-03-29 18:23:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3906181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacetango/pseuds/spacetango
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Solas. One year in the Redcliffe castle dungeon. Angst.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Twenty-two

The first time: it shows up in the uneasy silence between two garbled whispers. His head is so full of that spiraling red and spiteful hum, it takes him time (at least ten heartbeats he’ll decide later, though he’ll allow it might have been as many as thirteen) to catch its form wavering at the edge of his vision. A slight thing, more impression than substance, darting through the tattered Veil. By the time (the word is almost meaningless, caught as he is in this eternal net of caustic whispers) he turns his head to get a better look (he lies to himself: in truth, he wants it far away)…  
                                                                                                                      …nearer also. It wouldn’t be here otherwise.

When he turns to face it, it is gone.

#

The second time, he half-expects it. They’ve given up questioning him, if ever they believed he knew anything worthwhile (let there not be said there are no benefits to the Tevinter way of thinking), and left him to the dank comforts of his cell. He sits cross-legged amid the pulsing crystals as if he were meditating, and thinks of Arlathan. (Another lie, or perhaps a blurred truth: he counts the chasm of days that separates the start of her existence from that past cataclysm.)

That’s when it drifts in, and that’s when he knows its purpose.

#

Three and four come on the edge of sleep. He wakes with a feverish hum in his chest and the echo of her voice in his ears (was he dreaming?).

#

Five: the Veil is ragged and his will weakens. (More lies: he gives up resistance bit by bit, which is not synonymous with a weakened will.) Red crystals bloom on the walls like flowers maddened into being by the call of spring. He should not dream in this place, but he does, and it (she) is there, waiting.

“Solas,” it says with her voice as if the word were a precious garment to be tried on with care. Its form slips and wavers: now Lavellan, now an insubstantial blur.

“Begone, spirit.”

“You called me here.”

“I did not.”

It blurs and bends and dissipates with his conviction (evidence, he’ll tell himself, satisfied, that his willpower, unlike his vigor, isn’t dimming). Only when he wakes surrounded by the now constant gibbering of tainted lyrium does he realize those baleful whispers aren’t as insistent with her there.

#

Six through fourteen: he is troubled by the implication. He demonstrates (to no one) willpower. He does not dream.

Yet, she (it) is still there, a flicker just beyond the Veil, alert to the smallest shift in mood. It waits for him, because he has not (yet) divested himself of… of… the word he seeks is lost to a dendritic ache in his temples, his palms, his chest (the ancient corruption spreading), and so he settles on a substitute once it fades.

Calling the spirit’s continued presence an effect of his curiosity is safer than admitting to the comfort it (she) brings.

#

Fifteen, he instigates.

He’s hopelessly infected; there’s no reason to hold curiosity at bay (only in the moment of his death will he admit he was profoundly lonely), so he dreams again. The Fadescape is composed neatly of the shattered fragments of his cell, suspended in the hazy gloom by cumbrous red tendrils. Here and there lie the scattered artefacts of memories: his wooden mug on a plain Fereldan table next to a candle that gives no warmth and only the illusion of illumination; the broken head of a howling wolf carving, its throat crusted with jutting crimson crystals; the dirty cot in her Haven cell, draped with (of all things) a thick rug dark with ancient spiral patterns.

Near it, Lavellan. Not Lavellan.

Near it, the spirit wearing Lavellan’s form as he remembers it.

“You’re still here,” he says. He knows the danger. It is nothing compared to the waking world, cannibalized by chaos and corruption.

“Where else would I be?”

“The Fade is endless, is it not?”

She shrugs. The tensing of her shoulders is the same, as is the jut of her chin. “I heard you calling. I felt your dreams.”

He doesn’t argue. Instead: his hand traces the pattern of freckles on her cheek, the sharp angle of her jaw, the line of her collarbone.

#

Sixteen through twenty: fucking is not the right word (the destruction of the waking world preempts the necessity for right words and right choices), but it’ll do.

#

Twenty-one: she can, however briefly, materialize in his cell. He believes it is in equal parts due to the threadbare Veil, her nature, his will, and red lyrium. Its poison has seeped into his being; not even her proximity holds off its tide of crazed and anguished howls anymore. Physical pain alone would be respite.

On waking from fitful slumber, she is there. Her eyers glitter with strange hungers in the red and heavy dark.

“You’re dying.”

“Indeed. It is inevitable.” (What he doesn’t say: ironic, hilarious, pathetic.)

“It doesn’t have to be.”

Of course it comes to this. Her (its) stab at temptation is a line belonging to a timeless script (he indulges in hyperbole; the truth is, it is merely a very old one), and he has written half of it for reasons he doesn’t need to name. He allows it (and himself) the fleeting comfort of a tight embrace. His mana surges, enveloping the eldritch being in his arms until nothing is left but dissipating silver motes.

“Dareth shiral,” he mouths (to whom?) into the empty, malign air.

#

Twenty-two: he is denied reflection. Through the cackling chorus (it hungered for his act) he hears footfalls (two sets, neither familiar). What he sees on turning (aching to fight in ways he thought he’d left behind ages ago) renders him (for one heartbeat) stunned and speechless. There, beyond the bars, a sear of brilliant light.

Lavellan.

Lavellan, alive. She is bright beyond reason even in this dark and twisted place, and he was a fool to think he could approximate her with Fade-muddied memories and spirit surrogates.

He will contain his shock (relief, joy, hope), he will recover his words, and he will die (this enfleshment, anyway) helping her escape, but in this heartbeat, their expressions mirroring each other, his only purpose (craving) is to step onto the path she lights.

**Author's Note:**

> I love Solas's reaction to the Inquisitor showing up in Redcliffe, a scene that only gets better on a romance playthrough. For someone as contained and self-possessed as he is, his reaction is an immense tell. He doesn't take his eyes off her until Dorian speaks, and even then, it appears that he has to will himself to tear his glance away. 
> 
> A story can be found there. This is one version of it.


End file.
